1.1.4-Sophia-sol
Brick!club 1.1.4 - Works corresponding to words Turns out that I find interacting via tumblr is like the least intuitive and thus most intimidating thing ever, WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED. (me.) So! Lots of people said interesting things yesterday to my question about the value of money yesterday, and I’m looking at how alarming the structure is for people’s replies and discussion and going AAAHHHH HOW TO BEST RESPOND and my conclusion is apparently “DO NOTHING.” So, uh, thank you everyone for the fascinating discussion, and if anyone is interested in reading what more knowledgeable/better-at-googlefu people than me had to say, go look at the reblogs on my post? http://sophia-sol.tumblr.com/post/45842488137 Yeah. Anyways, today! In which Myriel talks and guillotines are more than just machines. 1. I love how the first half of this chapter is basically a summary of a bunch of times Myriel said awesome stuff — “gentle raillery”, pointed questions, sass, even a pun! :D 2. I think this is the first reference to Voltaire in the brick! The first of MANY. It is enough to make me wish I knew more of Voltaire than just having read Candide for a lit class once. (incidentally Candide was a MILLION times more awesome than I was expecting. Why had nobody ever told me that it was basically nothing but an epic snarkfest?) 3. Do other translations actually translate the bits of southern dialect given as examples? Hapgood certainly doesn’t. I wish to know what he’s SAYING! 4. Relatedly, “He understood how to say the grandest things in the most vulgar of idioms. As he spoke all tongues, he entered into all hearts." YES GOOD. Suiting your mode of speech to the situation and the listener instead of proudly insisting on speaking "properly"! I have strong feels about this and about how wrongheaded language prescriptivists are. It’s just another way of doing the us-vs-them thing, of othering people who are different from you and declaring yourself better. Myriel is above that! I am interested, though, to compare it with Valjean, who carefully cultivates “proper” speech. Iirc, when he first becomes Madeleine his speech is still rather on the rough side but through his rigorous self-education he retrains himself to speak “properly”. And of course, by doing so he makes people think better of him, just as Myriel makes people think better of him by speaking LESS properly. LANGUAGE IS SO INTERESTING. 5. “It will be perceived that he had a peculiar manner of his own of judging things: I suspect that he obtained it from the Gospel. “ '' skdjsfhdkjlfsd THE SNARK IS STRONG WITH THIS ONE. I love Hugo SO MUCH. 7. And then I was going to talk about the guillotine, and Myriel’s reaction to it, and basically uh THE ENTIRE SECOND HALF OF THE CHAPTER but I ran out of brain for the day so that’s it for thoughts I am capable of sharing with you. Hey, at least I read the whole chapter, GO ME, I am not falling behind yet! Commentary '''Caramarthenfan' Also! Javert’s rigorous self-education also shows in his speech (later on), but it doesn’t seem to affect how people perceive him at all, and I got the impression Hugo was mocking him a little.